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THE KING’S BUSINESS
Were they to partake of the Lord’s Supper only till the Day of Pentecost ? “Till He come.” Why, that is an ordinance, for the whole Church for all time. “As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come.” We are to keep these words all the time before us. I hope nobody thinks death is the Second Coming of the Lord. You will spoil the Scriptures that refer to it if you put death in the place of it. “I go to prepare a place for you, and death will come and take you to him self !” I hope he won’t ! There would be no blessed hope in that, to be sure, to have death come and take me to himself. And all the Scriptures would be equally spoiled. “But,” a friend said to me, “it matters little. If we are looking for death it is about the same as looking for the Second Com ing of the Lord.” In death the Lord is not represented as coming, but we as going. “The time of my departure is at hand” ( “I am going some where” ), and “To depart and be with Christ, which is far betetr.” In the Second Coming Christ comes to u s ; in death we go to Him. So in conver sion, there is a sense in which Christ comes to us through the power of the Spirit, but the Scripture represents us as coming to Him, rather than He com ing to us. “Come unto Me, all ye that labor.” It is the invitation of the Gospel, “Come to Jesus,” and when the sinner has come to Jesus there is regeneration. But Jesus has, not come to Him in the glory of His Sec ond Advent. The difference be tween looking forward to death and the coming in glory is immense; and it is pathetic to find dear Christian people who are looking to death as a sort of friend to release them and that is all. For the soul that is true. Death is not a sleeping of the soul, but a waking. It is a sleeping for the
are not many), and about all the Eng lish words that I know which could express the meaning, are in this verse. “This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.” He weilt up physi cally and visibly and gloriously; and in like manner as He went up He is coming back, physically and visibly and gloriously. “This same Jesus,” as if the Spirit predicted that somebody would think it meant something else, or somebody else. “This same Jesus.” It was the human name of our Lord. “Thou shalt call His name Jesus,” the name given to the Infant, “for He shall save His people from their sins.” If it said “This same Christ,” there might have been a sort of official reference of some kind. If it said, “This same Lord,” there might have been a refer ence to dominion of some kind. But it is, “This same Jesus that ye have seen go into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him g o ” Then the Holy Spirit in treating the subject in another place said, “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven” ; as if He thought “People will say that somebody else will de scend, or that I, perhaps will represent Christ on earth, and that my coming at Pentecost is the Second Coming; or that it means death, or something else. I want you to understand the Lord Himself will come—not I and not death, and not the progress of the Gospel, but the Lord Himself, the very Christ, the very Jesus that ye saw go up you shall see coming back in the clouds of glory.” There is one verse which, to my mind, precludes the reference to the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost. “As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come” (1 Corinthians 11:26).
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